Hardware acceleration

Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware, known as a hardware accelerator, to perform specific functions faster than can be done by software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calculated by software running on a CPU can also be calculated by an appropriate hardware accelerator, or by a combination of both. To perform computing tasks more efficiently, generally one can invest time and money in improving the software, improving the hardware, or both. There are various approaches with advantages and disadvantages in terms of decreased latency, increased throughput, and reduced energy consumption. Typical advantages of focusing on software may include greater versatility, more rapid development, lower non-recurring engineering costs, heightened portability, and ease of updating features or patching bugs, at the cost of overhead to compute general operations. Advantages of focusing on hardware may include speedup, reduced power consumption, lower latency, increased parallelism and bandwidth, and better utilization of area and functional components available on an integrated circuit; at the cost of lower ability to update designs once etched onto silicon and higher costs of functional verification, times to market, and the need for more parts. In the hierarchy of digital computing systems ranging from general-purpose processors to fully customized hardware, there is a tradeoff between flexibility and efficiency, with efficiency increasing by orders of magnitude when any given application is implemented higher up that hierarchy (that is, towards the more customized end). This hierarchy includes general-purpose processors such as CPUs, more specialized processors such as programmable shaders in a GPU, applications implemented on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and fixed-function implemented on application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Hardware acceleration is advantageous for performance, and practical when the functions are fixed, so updates are not as needed as in software solutions. With...